Sessions crackdown on pot could make life harder for Republicans in November

The Trump Justice Department’s crackdown on legalized marijuana could be an issue in this year’s midterms — if Democrats choose to make it one.

Multipleoutlets reported Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration were rolling back an Obama era policy to scale back federal prosecution of marijuana-related cases in jurisdictions where it is not illegal under state law. A majority of states — including California, as of Jan. 1 — allow pot use in at least some circumstances, but the growing, selling and possession of marijuana are still federal crimes.

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The move, which reflects long-standing Republican antipathy to drug use going back to the 1960s, and Sessions’s own view of weed as only “slightly less awful” than heroin, is unlikely to be popular with the solid majority — 64 percent — of Americans who support pot legalization. An October Gallup poll found that for the first time in the organization’s history of asking about the issue a majority of Republicans supported legalization, along with 67 percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats. President Trump himself said during his campaign that he would leave marijuana policy to the states, and Republican senators including Lisa Murkowski (whose state, Alaska, has legalized pot) and Rand Paul (the Senate’s leading libertarian and states’-rights advocate) came out against Sessions’s decision. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, a state that has also legalized pot, was particularly outspoken, threatening to block Justice Department appointments unless Sessions reverses himself.

Will weed become another wedge issue for Democrats? Legalization has proved popular at the polls, with eight of the nine 2016 ballot measures passing, including in four states — Arkansas, Florida, Montana and North Dakota — that voted for Trump. (Those four states all voted to approve medical marijuana, not recreational use.) The measure in California to legalize pot was extremely popular among young and African-American voters, two groups Democrats hope to get to the polls in their attempt to win back control of Congress, governorships and state houses.

The 2017 off-year election also saw a resounding victory for Democrat Phil Murphy in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. Murphy was an outspoken supporter of legalizing recreational weed use in the state.

Phil Murphy, Governor-elect of New Jersey, and Shiela Oliver, Lieutenant Governor-elect, wave to supporters at their election night victory rally in Asbury Park, New Jersey on November 7, 2017. (Photo: Dominick Reuter/Reuters)

For Democrats, forcing their Republican opponents to choose between backing an unpopular policy or breaking ranks with the White House is an appealing prospect.

Despite being pushed from Democratic governors and activists, President Barack Obama declined to reclassify marijuana during his eight years in office, leaving it as a Schedule 1 drug in the same group with LSD and heroin. Obama said the reclassification was a job for Congress, but there was a process by which the executive branch could have taken steps to change it. Obama’s Drug Enforcement Agency ruled that marijuana had no medicinal value, disappointing reform advocates who had hoped Obama, who used pot himself in his youth, would do more to help the legalization cause while in office.